Drogas, Sexo, Y Un Dictador Muerto: 1978 on Vinyl in Spain

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”
—Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852

In November 1975, when General Francisco Franco died, four decades of dictatorship that melded state repression with fundamentalist Catholic moralism were not easily jettisoned. Although the last half of Franco’s rule did open new spaces for cultural expression, ossified habits remained—most notably silence, an absence of discourse about the present political situation. The old’s shuddering at the shock of the new was a theme of Spain’s (or the world’s) modernity, but the old, as embodied by conservatism, also produced the new, as embodied by socialism. In Spain, the radical desire for socialist revolution was catalyzed by the backwardness thrust upon that society by the pseudo-progress of the military dictatorship of the period before the civil war. Fascism, in its essence, was an attempt to insinuate an imagined “old,” a valorized set of national traditions, into modernity as a bulwark against the shock of newness, even as doing so was a constitutively “new,” modern project. The desire, writ large, to “go back,” along with, for example, Modernism’s fetishism of the “primitive,” was not possible until the entry into a decisively new historical epoch put (primitive) traditions at a distance. This contestation of values, of visions for human relations, most violently manifest during the civil war, placed millions on specific, countervailing sides of history.

When punk rock emerged in Spain, its nihilism was a rejection of this struggle. Although left-wing and anarchist punks were common in the 1980s, the original explosion, documented on vinyl in 1978, was not directly partisan. And yet in trying to reject their parents’ and grandparents’ struggles, the punks were also showing that they not could break free from history’s manacles even as their outward appearance indicated efforts to do so. Punk emerged around the world at the very moment that Spanish society at large was facing the post-dictatorship dawn. In Spain, I believe, this concomitance meant that punk rockers’ expression was colored by the experience of having come of age in the somnambulent final years of Franco’s life. The attenuated availability of cultural forms that could inspire punks, even as reagents, meant that the music itself took shape in less recognizably “punk” ways compared to punk rock in other countries. And, most of all, the societal norms against which the first Spanish punks arrayed themselves were more constrictive, duplicitous, and generally pernicious than those of other countries—but at the same time, the rest of Spanish society was also teaching itself to begin imagining life not wholly circumscribed by a narrow, enervating, state-enforced set of values and everyday practices. The punks, as well as everyone else, therefore, as much as they were not interested in the traditional set-piece battles of their ancestors, were not starting with a tabula rasa. By noting humanity’s collective tethers to the horrors of its past, I am not criticizing Spain’s punks nor devaluing their achievements. Rather, I hope to show how Spanish punks in 1978 negotiated the volatile political period of the first years after Franco’s death and explain how the contingency between the dictatorship and punk rock made this moment unique. Furthermore, although 1978 was the year punk exploded in Spain, it was also the year the country’s constitution was ratified, cementing the transition to parliamentary democracy, which so changed the country’s political stakes that punks and other radicals needed another couple years to regroup, which begins to explain why more Spanish punk records were produced in 1978 than in 1979, 1980, and 1981 combined.

The punk explosion had its local contexts. Madrid, traditionally a stronghold of the Falange (Franco’s party), developed a punk scene characterized much more as a release valve, a safety mechanism that allowed the children of the bourgeoisie to experiment with new-found freedom prior to reintegrating with their parents’ society, even as that society was evolving to accommodate greater liberalism—due, in very small part, to the example punk offered. In Barcelona, an economic center that Franco needed but nevertheless despised for its independent streak (attributable both to a history of leftism and Catalan nationalism), punk flourished in a less superficial way. However, the health of the punk scene was not due to Barcelona’s liberalism giving it space so much as the opposite: La Banda Trapera Del Río hailed from one of Modernism’s experiments in exclusion, a suburban housing project designed for factory workers but filled by the late 1970s largely with poor and unemployed immigrants. Rather than inclusiveness based on an affinity between punk rock and Barcelona’s liberalism or the city’s own marginalized status under Franco (when Catalan language and culture were suppressed), it was the punks’ exclusion from mainstream society that enabled—nay, forced—these miscreants to create a subculture that made sense to them, or that made no sense to their elders.

Cornella

A rejection of the struggles of the civil war, the struggles driven underground and abroad by fascism, could be seen in—parallel with the experience of many post-dictatorship societies—Spain’s collective, silent refusal to address, digest, and come to terms with the past, as well as its haste to enter into a European present of parliamentary democracy and consumer capitalism. These were Spanish society’s inheritance from the past in the late 1970s just after Franco died, characterizing its present. Punk’s rejection of those struggles, however, was different. It was a rejection of the silence that characterized both life under dictatorship and the immediate post-dictatorship period. And thus did punk too inherit a contextual past, which characterized its present. Punk in Spain emerged at the same time as the nascent historical trend toward parliamentary democracy; it would therefore be impossible to disentangle its genesis from this liberalization. But I do not believe that its emergence is synonymous with the liberalization process. Almen TNT’s lone 45, the first independently released Spanish punk record, which came out in 1979, is notable for its Stooges-sounding song “Ya Nadie Cree En La Revolución,” about how no one believes in revolution anymore. The song decries the consumer culture that was emerging (particularly, the well-known department store chain El Corte Inglés). By embracing this version of capitalism with the fall of the dictatorship, Spanish society failed to face exactly what the defeat of the most radical currents in the civil war entailed. All the way back in 1965, the Situationist International presciently diagnosed this problem in its “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and All Countries.” They wrote:

The Asturian miners’ strike (virtually continuous since 1962) and all the other signs of opposition that herald the end of Francoism do not indicate an inevitable future for Spain, but a choice: either the holy alliance now being prepared by the Spanish Church, the monarchists, the “left Falangists” and the Stalinists to harmoniously adapt post-Franco Spain to modernized capitalism and to the Common Market; or the resumption and completion of the most radical aspects of the revolution that was defeated by Franco and his accomplices on all sides—the revolution that realized truly socialist human relationships for a few weeks in Barcelona in 1936.

As we know, the truly socialist human relationships of 1936 were not realized with the fall of Franco. Almen TNT knew that too and did not want to keep quiet about it. Spain’s national economic reforms of 1959, which entailed accepting assistance from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, did not lay the groundwork for the end of Francoism so much as for the smooth transition from dictatorship to late capitalism, with socialism far off the map. (“Peacefully” extirpating left alternatives to capitalism is the fundamental goal of the work of these institutions.) Among the early punks were workers, unemployed, leftists, anarchists, lotharios, impresarios, queens, dykes, poseurs, scroungers, fops, hop-heads, sots, borrachos, thugs, delinquents, cut-throats, loafers, finks, slobs, perverts, pugilists, common criminals, hustlers, scammers, skimmers, skeezers, students (gasp!), and perhaps even unreconstructed Falangists: punk in Spain in 1978 was not monolithic. It differed from city to city, band to band. But punks, I believe, shared a collective, perhaps unconscious, desire not simply to allow the (recent) past to fade into the dark, inaccessible reaches of memory. Even as they chose not to rehearse their parents’ and grandparents’ fights, they tried to throw history into relief, to shove polite society’s face into the shit it had dealt in its efforts to move on after Franco’s death.

Generally speaking, the transition from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy was difficult. The first prime minister expressly attempted to continue the Francoist project. There were outbreaks of violence, attempts by the extreme right to prevent the transition. But what punk did was to say that, although bourgeois society wanted to nod in agreement that fascism was execrable, also execrable was the failure to seize the opening up of that society and the transformation of it into the softer bondage of market capitalism and representative democracy. Punk’s implicit accusation was what Spanish society at large has begun to accept only recently: that everyone who lived under the dictatorship, no matter their internal discomfort, was a collaborationist. Spain had once shown the world the feats that could be achieved by radical political imagination, and punk knew it. Punk did not appropriate socialism as its goal. That was the point!—the old goals, which implied the old dyads, were no longer tenable. At the same time, punk argued that acquiescence to the failure of fascism and the failure of socialism was untenable as well—because this acquiescence meant a belief that capitalism should, by rights, prevail. Spanish punk in 1978 did not have a coherent ideology and had no desire to promulgate one. Its unifier was simple: possibility.

Yes

So punk reared its unkempt head in Spain in 1978. Though the bands started earlier (La Banda Trapera Del Río in 1976), five punk records were released that year, all by bands from Barcelona or Madrid, along with one fake punk record, which may surpass the others, or, indeed, all other punk records. At the same time, vestiges of the pre-punk era of Iberian rocknroll appeared on vinyl, revved-up and seemingly also influenced by the punk explosion. The sound of the earliest Spanish punk records shared much with punk’s precursors, from old-fashioned 50s rocknroll to glam to early metal to Detroit’s hard proto-punk. Punk in Northern Europe or England certainly did have similar influences, but the classic 77 punk sound, with a few notable exceptions, did not have Spanish punk’s affinities with hard rock from earlier in the decade. It could be that Spain’s countercultural period was compressed because it did not start as early as that of England or the United States, and so the evolution that occurred in rocknroll’s sound over the decade from 1965 to 1975 outside Spain had to span a period half as long, which thus butted up against the early moments of the punk revolution. Proto-punk therefore was simultaneous with punk rock proper.

Drogas, Sexo, Y Un Dictador Muerto: 1978 on Vinyl in Spain

So punk reared its unkempt head in Spain in 1978. Though the bands started earlier (La Banda Trapera Del Río in 1976), five punk records were released that year, all by bands from Barcelona or Madrid, along with one fake punk record, which may surpass the others, or, indeed, all other punk records. At the same time, vestiges of the pre-punk era of Iberian rocknroll appeared on vinyl, revved-up and seemingly also influenced by the punk explosion. The sound of the earliest Spanish punk records shared much with punk’s precursors, from old-fashioned 50s rocknroll to glam to early metal to Detroit’s hard proto-punk. Punk in Northern Europe or England certainly did have similar influences, but the classic 77 punk sound, with a few notable exceptions, did not have Spanish punk’s affinities with hard rock from earlier in the decade. It could be that Spain’s countercultural period was compressed because it did not start as early as that of England or the United States, and so the evolution that occurred in rocknroll’s sound over the decade from 1965 to 1975 outside Spain had to span a period half as long, which thus butted up against the early moments of the punk revolution. Proto-punk therefore was simultaneous with punk rock proper. The continuum of Spain’s punk rock and hard rock, sound-wise, has become clear in the last few years for those outside Spain (particularly noncollectors) because, with the exception of the EP by Kaka De Luxe, all of Spain’s punk records from 1978 have been reissued, along with previously un-issued live songs from that year by La Banda Trapera Del Río. The bootleg of Los Punk Rockers LP appeared several years ago and is tough to find nowadays—though not as tough as the original LP, which is one of the rarest European punk records. Of the punkish metal and hard rock of 1978, Zarpa Rock’s first LP was recently reissued on CD, and a track from the extremely rare Ciclón 45 appeared on the compilation LP “Andergraun Vibrations” Vol. 2, released late in 2005. Red Box El Rojo, an obscure, aggressive hard rock band, whose 45 was released on the same label as Kaka De Luxe’s EP, has not been reissued, nor has Almen TNT’s 45 from early 1979, or Rockcelona’s “La Bruja” LP. Finally, Ramoncín y WC? was a band peripherally related to punk, but their 1978 LP (a single from it was also released) has apparently been reissued on CD by EMI. There were many other records released in Spain in 1978, but none I have encountered fits the self-imposed criteria (punk/pseudo-punk/proto-punk) of this article. I am sure I will learn of other records in the future that I should have included. C’est la vie.

Ciclón

Ciclón’s six-minute hard rocker “Mr. Mague” shares little with punk except that it is comparatively quite aggressive for pre-punk rocknroll. The riff is a monster that’ll get stuck in your head instantly. Nearly all the other material on the two great volumes of “Andergraun Vibrations” (75% of the LPs are on a single CD reissue) is underground hippie rock—good stuff, often with cool fuzz guitars, but with Hendrix, the Doors, or Love as primary influences, rather than Sabbath or Stooges. “Mr. Mague” is not a straight Sabbath rip by any means, but it is heavy and centers on that powerful riff. The vocals edge into upper ranges at times, though not as extremely as Ozzy’s. Ciclón hailed from Burgos, in the far northwest of Spain. Their independently released single achieved little distribution outside their hometown because it eschewed major-label networks and is now one of the rarest and most obscure Spanish rock records. (Therefore, I do not intend to give the impression that its status as proto-punk was a direct influence on the explicitly punk bands that came after it, which almost certainly never heard it.) The picture sleeve, more so than the music, is what screams punk to me. It depicts a dilapidated, dirty, and broken toilet, with the band named spray-painted next to the door. Apparently the band saw this WC at the side of the highway while touring and realized immediately that a photograph of it had to appear on their record. In comparison, other sleeves of records on “Andergraun Vibrations” depict flowery band logos or photos of the band. The liner notes of the compilation include a quote from the lead guitarist of Ciclón: “We were in Alicante, the day after a gig, walking near the beach and saw that abandoned place with the filthy WC … we thought it was fantastic, we took a photo and then added that ugly color to the sleeve. We tried to be as obnoxious as possible, it was our way to tell the world to fuck off!!” That is an ethos any punker could support. Their location far from the major cities of Spain and independent release contributed to Ciclón’s obscurity, but one can see that these attributes, along with Franco’s death and the birth of punk rock, created the space for their aggressive sound and attitude.

Ramoncín y WC?

Ramoncín y WC? appeared on bills with punk bands at the end of the 70s, but although he appropriated punk imagery, the music on his eponymous LP (and a single) on EMI from 1978 could not be construed as punk. It’s histrionic mainstream 70s heavy rock (cock rock) with wild guitars that would likely appeal to fans of the genre. (This record has not been reissued, but it is available online.) I’m sure non-Spanish speakers will get more out of it than those who can understand the presumably dumb lyrics. Even though the song entitled something like “The King of Fried Chicken” seems like it might be laden with innuendo, its lyrics include oh-so-subtle gems like “Hear me fart, smell my shit.” Maybe Franco’s death obviated the need to speak in code and cleared a space for quite literal rendering of popular sentiment. Pretty much every country seems to have had some tight-pantsed rocker who attempted to cash in on punk. Italy’s formidable, Fellini-esque contribution to the pseudogenre was Andrea Mingardi Supercircus—punker than Ramoncín ever was but not very. Listening to “El Rey de Pollo Frito” back to back with “Cuitat Podrida” by La Banda Trapera Del Río is instructive. Because he aimed for the lowest common denominator, Ramoncín’s bluster is calculated, rehearsed, and not at all threatening. In comparison, La Banda Trapera Del Río’s take on hard rock is far more snotty, aggressive, and unprofessional—in a word, punk. For those preparing for the quiz, Ramoncín (née José Ramón Julio Martínez Márquez) now campaigns on behalf of a Spanish organization like the RIAA, defending artists’ copyrights or whatever. In the 70s, punks would spit on him and throw garbage when he played. I’m sure he told himself it was part of the act, the audience really getting into the antisocial tendencies his music radiated. But the punks, of course, were smarter than him. I’ve heard that recently when he has tried to play, as a result of his work for intellectual property rights, audiences have greeted him with flying bottles. Wonder what he tells himself now.

What is interesting today about Ramoncín then is that he offers proof how quickly the machinery of recuperation (ie, co-opting) could mesh its gears and churn out a fictitious punk product. One contemporaneous punk-rock critic accurately assessed Ramoncín, who, he wrote in a UK fanzine, “has been given mucho backing and has turned in a transparent product of cultural marginalia.” Spain was not completely living in the dark ages completely under Franco, and the dictatorship did allow (certainly with multifarious US aid) the creation of sophisticated modern corporations, but I would argue that one difference between dictatorship and capitalist, liberal democracy is that the latter co-opts its discontents and antagonists whereas the former jails or kills, disappears, them. Anyone fishing Shit-Fi for dissertation topics, please prove me right (or wrong). So if Chevy Chase’s mantra during the first season of Saturday Night Live—“This breaking news just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”—was not enough, along came the fake punker Ramoncín to prove it.

Rockcelona

Rockcelona’s “La Bruja” LP is an extremely rare and obscure piece of fuzzed-out hard rock. It has never been reissued, and published information about it is scant. The LP was released on the Columbia label and apparently most copies that have turned up in recent years are marked promotional. I wonder if it sold any copies when it was released! (In the last three years, copies have sold for prices from ~$100 to ~$400 on eBay.) Both 1978 and 1979 appear online as the year of the album’s release. The only MP3s of the album I have found online have sound glitches throughout. Beyond a thick, jagged guitar sound and relatively fast tempos—which are themselves notable because none of the five Spanish punk records from 1978 is particularly fast (La Banda Trapera Del Río was definitely the fastest)—the record is notable for being the only one in this article, aside from Los Punk Rockers, to have lyrics in English. Charmingly, the English are broken. Incidentally, with its voluminous slang, Spanish seems an appropriate language for punk rock: there are 800 ways to say “penis” according to Camilio José Cela’s Diccionairo Secreto. On the other hand, I can’t decide if Rockcelona is the stupidest band name ever or only in the top three. If it is the winning loser, perhaps that gives it some cache from the shit-fi perspective—which is certainly the only perspective from which one could appreciate the cover artwork. Because Rockcelona was a hard rock outfit, however, one is unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt: they probably were just a bunch of blockheaded hair farmers imbued with mislaid Catalan pride. Still, I must say that I enjoy this record. Of the records in this article, it’s my most recent discovery, so I could grow less fond of it with time. But “La Bruja” (“The Witch”) could be one of those uncommon punky hard rock records that so many collectors seek but never quite find. Here’s the title track. Not that Rockcelona sound quite like the celebrated, uber-obscure Stonewall—I hear no organ herein—the snotty, driving vibe of “La Bruja” nevertheless confers a similar feeling. (I hope I didn’t drive the record’s price up by saying that, because I’d like to cross it off the old want-list sooner rather than later.) It’s not punk, or even proto-punk. But it’s hard to imagine that Rockcelona could have existed even two years earlier, before the music magazines of the world were discussing the new sound and attitude that was killing off the dinosaurs of rock.

No

Drogas, Sexo, Y Un Dictador Muerto: 1978 on Vinyl in Spain

Zarpa Rock

One of my favorite discoveries of recent years, Zarpa Rock as well could not be properly labeled punk, but these teenaged outcasts deserve far more respect than the lamentable cock-rocker Ramoncín. From a small town near Valencia, they were another outside-the-mainstream aggressive hard rock/heavy metal band to release a record in 1978. Zarpa Rock (meaning “claw rock”—it makes sense when you view the sleeve art) recorded their LP, “Los 4 Jinetes del Apocalípsis,” in a single take, live in the studio—that alone puts them far closer to punk than heavy metal. The five songs on the record, which was reissued on CD last year, revolve around the theme of the apocalypse, with graphic and morbid lyrics that one might associate with hardcore or metal of the mid 80s. Unsurprisingly, the record was a poor seller and had limited distribution; now, it’s impossibly rare. The music combines the slightly bluesy mid-70s Spanish hard rock sound of bands like Storm, which channeled Sabbath and Deep Purple, with a just-this-side-of-NWOBHM early heavy metal sound, before the flourishes of psych totally gave way to the technicality of metal. “Los 4 Jinetes del Apocalípsis” is dirty and driving. “La Contaminación,” about a nuclear holocaust, feels a little like early Motörhead, though not quite as direct—same foot-tapping, insistent backbeat—with fuzzed-out guitars throughout. These longer tracks have extended periods with no vocals, just guitars on top of guitars, though not in a flashy way, with restrained and, dare I say, tasteful drumming, all of which get to the heart of what I want from this type of music. The slow, acoustic three-minute, build-up introduction to “La Guerra Cruel” is a (slightly unwelcome) reminder that this band was not punk rock—but the song does really get going once it gets going. Otherwise, the cheap recording is just perfect, with echoes galore on the vocals and guitar solos overtaking the rhythm and then dropping out again without any studio trickery. You can nearly feel the sweat pouring from their brows (or, brow, in the case of drummer Jesus). The CD was mastered from the original tapes (with at least one lovable tape defect), and I actually wish their were some vinyl surface noise to add to the atmosphere. I’ve never seen an original of the album, but I can almost smell a dusty, smoke-stained, laminated sleeve, of a dodgy paper quality rarely seen on albums today—yet with scuffed and scratched vinyl that feels sturdier than that of today’s new records and certainly with better mastering than could be achieved even by the deepest of today’s pockets. The echo effects make the record sound like it can be best appreciated cranked up on a shitty stereo in a high-ceilinged, stone-walled, hash-smoke-filled apartment in a dirty backstreet of Cádiz with your moustachioed metalhead friend, who secretly dates his second cousin because no other girls in town will talk to him. The last two tracks of the album are slower than the first three (though both get rolling after some time); their melancholy subjects have been depicted by Spanish artists like Goya better than anyone else: the cruelties of war and famine. If I may bloviate for one (more) moment: though the line between punk and metal historically became more ethical than sonic, nearly everything about this album, as I listen and read the lyrics in 2007, feels “punk” except the sinuous songwriting. Still, punks who don’t listen to metal are today about as rare as the original Zarpa Rock LP, so I imagine any punker with even a slightly developed palate will love this record. As for the ‘bangers, this LP might be too primitive for them. That’s okay. We’ll file it alongside Parabellum’s “Sacrilegio” 12" and White Hell’s single as a perfectly primitive metal record that, by rights, should belong to the punks.

Los Punk Rockers

“Los Exitos de Sex Pistols por Los Punk Rockers” is perhaps the finest shit-fi record of all time (forget that mention of “Sacrilegio” one sentence back). It simply does not get any stupider, stranger, more poorly played, funnier, or nigh-psychotic (and possibly -psychedelic) than this record. Even the most humorless sad-sack must crack a smile when the singer growls and caterwauls incoherently, and in-the-red, in no language known to even the most ardent linguistic anthropologists during “Problems.” So what exactly is this fine piece of shit? Not much is known about the origin of the record, but it seems to follow a pattern that was once relatively common, especially in the, uh, less developed nations of the world: rather than trying to license a hit record for sale in, for example, Spain, a record company paid a studio band to record their own version of it—a covers record, essentially—that would be sold profitably to fans hungry for the real thing, which was completely unavailable. The record didn’t pretend to be the real thing, but if the fans were confused and thought it was, well, no harm in that. The records, and cassettes too, were sold in supermarkets and on roadsides, though not necessarily outside the normal distribution channels of legally manufactured records. (The original LP jacket mentions a cassette version, catalog # NC. 1276, but it was supposedly released under a different band name.) “Los Exitos de Sex Pistols” was released, in two different pressings (!), on Dial Discos, under its Nevada series. The back of the sleeve of one version depicts, as many mainstream 70s records did, various other records available on the imprint, a few of which are possibly in the same style, such as “Los Exitos de Julio Iglesias.” The difference is that Los Punk Rockers managed to outdo the Pistols at their own game, whereas I doubt Mr. Iglesias blushed before phoning his lawyer if he ever learned about the album sold under his name (the cover of which archly includes a silhouette of him, rather than his actual likeness). The back of the sleeve includes Dial Discos’ address, the printer’s address, legal information (ha), and the release date. Every record pictured from the Nevada series includes the reference number for the LP and the cassette. I don’t know what the other sleeve variation has instead of the pictures of the other Nevada releases.

The bootleg of the LP, which is what you’re likely to encounter when you see this record for sale on eBay, has a few obvious differences from the original. It used the version of the sleeve with the other releases on Nevada, but deleted the catalog numbers. Also, on the back in the top right, it says “1978,” but the original does not. The bootleg sleeve, which is also larger than the original, has a printed spine unlike the original (and the cardstock differs, with the original laminated and bootleg varnished). The front of the boot’s sleeve lacks the Nevada logo in the bottom right and the catalog number, ND-1276 ESTEREO, along with the label name. Finally, the colors of the boot’s sleeve are slightly brighter, with the punk woman’s face more ruddy. The vinyl is clearly different (original matrix: ND-1275 A / ND-1276 B followed by a diamond-shaped glyph; bootleg matrix, in Czech Republic pressing style: AE 12759/A / AE 12760/A). The original label is brown and beige, whereas the bootleg is pink and magenta and includes songwriting credits instead of only the song names. As I mentioned, the original LP is extremely rare. When one sold in 2007 at the incredible Wah Wah Records store in Barcelona, it was the first the shop’s owner had seen in something like 15 years. I’ve heard of an insane trade: Opus single for Los Punk Rockers LP. Presumably, both traders thought the other was a complete idiot.

“Los Exitos de Sex Pistols” was obviously recorded in a flash, before the next trend could take hold. The musicians more-or-less learned the songs from “Never Mind the Bollocks,” but the singer must not have spoken much English, because his approximations of Johnny Rotten are complete nonsense. (Here are “Holidays in the Sun” and “Pretty Vacant”.) Even when singing the song title, as in the chorus of “Seventeen,” he seems to be making words up: “I’m a lazy seven.” He does have the snottiness down pat, though. The vocals are clearly the best part of the record, simply because they’re so hilariously terrible. The guitar sound is thin and fuzzy, quite unlike the multitracked wall of guitars on “NMTB”—actually, it’s a lot closer to what one associates today with DIY punk of the late 70s than the Pistols’ sound. Few punk sleeves are as iconic as that of “NMTB,” but this album’s sleeve does fit the music well. It’s dumb. The woman on the sleeve appears to be some random person a photographer pulled off the street and dressed in moderately “punk” duds. (A friend of mine coined the term “calzone” to describe an unfortunate effect extremely tight pants have on luscious hips—check the model’s jeans pockets to see an example.) Some time ago, one of the guys behind Munster Records saw this woman walking down the street in Madrid; he recognized her but didn’t know what to say and she escaped. Me, I would’ve followed her home, in the hopes that she had a stash of LPs under the bed.

When I was in Spain last year, someone told me of gossip that the popular Spanish prog-rock band Asfalto was responsible for this recording. Their legit records, I noticed, are easy to find in Spain. I wonder if the members of the band would admit to having recorded this abomination. Maybe the gossip is not true. I did find, in my research, that Asfalto played London’s Marquee in October 1978, which would’ve been the perfect place to learn about the Pistols. The early-for-the-trend Vibrators, who collaborated with Chris Spedding, the producer of the Pistols’ 76 demo (Spedding may have actually played guitar on it), played the Marquee the following day.

This LP could demonstrate one way that the transitional period of the first few years after Franco’s death perfectly coincided with the worldwide punk explosion to create music in Spain that stood apart from that of its peer nations. The uneven development of the worldwide capitalist economy is clearly due to factors like dictatorships, which, however market-friendly they were, as Spain’s started to become in the last half of Franco’s rule, still stifled innovation in the introduction of cultural commodities. Unscrupulous business practices have been endemic to popular music since its early days, but they are aided by local economic situations that bear attitudes toward legality out of joint with the larger global system. Thus, bootlegs have flourished in countries with lax regulations of intellectual property. In this LP’s case, however, not only did some apparent legal loophole create the space for it, so too did Spain’s rush to catch up with the rest of Europe culturally after Franco’s death, which included the explosion of subcultures as resistance—a sea change from the types of resistance that flourished before and during the civil war, in the era before the society of the spectacle commodity. The major difference between this record and the “real” punk records from Spain in 1978 is that Los Punk Rockers were not members of a movement. They took from the movement, however loosely constituted it may have been, but they did not contribute to it. Indeed, I am sure the “true” punks, such as members of Kaka De Luxe, if they were aware of this record would have considered it an insulting joke. Some aspects of punk rock, Los Punk Rockers showed, were easy to fake on record, but being a member of an oppositional subculture in a repressive society was not one of them. The Sex Pistols obviously serve as an introduction to nearly everyone’s understanding of punk rock, but I believe a far more accurate representation of the silliness and lack of pretense of punk as it was and is lived by the majority of its practitioners can be found on Los Punk Rockers’ LP. The stakes were far higher for the Pistols or La Banda Trapera Del Río than they are for me and my friends today, as we sit around laughing our asses off while listening to Los Punk Rockers.

I believe an entire book could be written about “Los Exitos de Sex Pistols por Los Punk Rockers,” perhaps in the 33.3 series. But I’ll stop here. This record is essential. It is probably the finest example of accidental greatness in musical history—and punk’s history is littered with examples of accidental greatness, or else the Shit-Fi project wouldn’t exist.

Basura

Relatively unknown today outside collector circles, Basura and Mortimer both released 45s in 1978. (Peligro was another band of the era, from Barcelona, which did not release a record.) Not to be confused with the later Basque hardcore punk band of the same name, Basura released a 45 whose four-minute tunes would not be considered punk, or even proto-punk, by any standard. They’re basic up-tempo boogie-rock. I suppose the sleeve art veers toward punk rock but only because the artist apparently thought the punk aesthetic was just more angular version of the hippie aesthetic (and maybe before all the black-and-white artwork of the 80s it once was); Basura’s sleeve is pretty much pop-art. The band name is punk enough. But Basura was mainly transgressive insofar as the lyrical concerns included—cara A—lesbianism and—cara B—waiting for the WC (detect a theme yet?). Maybe there’s another dissertation topic lurking here: coprophilia in post-dictatorship societies. “No Seas Lesbiana Mi Amor” is a piss-take of the archetypal pop love song except that the narrator worries his love will go unrequited because the object of his affection, shall we say, doesn’t view the world in quite the same way he does. Not only does my college-age self relate deeply to the lyrics, I actually find the song quite catchy and compelling. It’s constantly stuck in my head. One thing becomes clear listening to these punk records from Spain 1978: glam had a deep effect on those would become punk rockers. Whereas London and New York 77 punk contained a current that rejected the gender-bending sexual openness of glam, outlying scenes that were not quite on the leading edge left more room for experimentation. There was no been-there, done-that attitude in Madrid or Barcelona when it came to guys dressing effeminately and stealing a kiss while the flash bulbs fired as there would have been in the post–NY Dolls Lower

East Side scene. Glam, clearly, was novel and exciting (and remains so for Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s most important filmmaker). It’s true that, in its own way, Basura’s is an ode to heterosexuality, but one imagines that even the acknowledgment that out there among the chicas lurked something other than the desire to be a groupie or a wife was enough to piss off legions of Falangists skimming the music pages over their morning cafecito. Indeed, schooling for women did not become compulsory in Spain until the 60s! The sexual revolution that swept most of the world beginning in the mid-60s did not land in Spain until the late 70s, after Franco’s death. Needless to say, Basura’s 45 on Belter Rec (which also released La Banda Trapera Del Río’s single and LP in 1978) pretty much didn’t make it out of the basura-bin of history, and it’s now a rare piece. I do get a good chuckle from seeing it on wantlists of strict punk collectors, as I imagine them going from “Loner with a Boner” to “Love Lies Limp” after throwing this m-/m- just-won-on-eBay slab on the turntable. Don’t even get said scum started on Paypal’s dollar to euro exchange rate! Speaking of m-/m-, I give Munster credit for using a “German ex-” copy for the sleeve of their reissue without any Photoshoppery interfering with an authentic reissue experience.

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Drogas, Sexo, Y Un Dictador Muerto: 1978 on Vinyl in Spain

Mortimer

Mortimer strike me as merry pranksters, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they saw some link between the summer of hate and the Cabaret Voltaire because of their 1978 single’s A side, “Idi Amin Dada.” (They released a second single in 1979.) Though Dada, the avant-garde art movement, was resolutely international, the Spanish influence on the movement seems to have been limited to the Spanish influenza that killed off many in Cologne who might have otherwise survived World War I in the months before the Armistice—a horror on top of horrors that inspired Dadaist absurdism. (In contrast, Surrealism was associated with Spain more than any other country except perhaps France.) Did Mortimer intuit the connection between the historical avant-garde and punk rock that theoreticians like John Savage and Greil Marcus later declared concrete? The answer is no—Idi Amin Dada was simply the General’s given name.

But the choice to sing about a military dictator from Uganda in the aftermath of Francoism was not idle or random; it was no feel-good topic for a rocknroll song. Like a few other topical punk bands of 1978 (K9s, Black Randy & the Metrosquad, Battered Wives, Sex Pistols), Mortimer did indeed sing about Idi Amin, but given the context, singing the lyrics “mi general” did not represent simple punk satire and offensiveness. Instead, the song can be seen as an experiment in obliqueness, especially considering the sunny feel of the music, which is out of joint with its subject matter. A song explicitly about the now-dead Franco may have been impossible due to the Falangist hangover of 1978, but to locate their critique outside Spain, at sufficient distance, was to create the space for a sarcastic attack. It was to say that those who hailed Franco as “mi general” were no different from those who supported Idi Amin, whose crimes against humanity were a hot topic in the world media at the time. For what is a dictator if not a Saturn-like father who devours his nation? In Idi Amin’s case, the cannibalism was actual. Moreover, I believe that the picture on the back of the record cover, which shows each band member wearing the gag glasses-and-nose complicates their critique. This picture, which takes away the bloodiness of the gag glasses from the front cover (which must be meant to represent Idi Amin) and places the glasses on the band members, can be read as Mortimer disambiguating the connection between their song and Franco. They are saying that Idi Amin—Franco—was inside each of them, not in the sense of evil possibility incarnate, but that to have grown up under Franco was to have internalized the fascist optic to some degree. Idi Amin, by the record’s logic, was interchangeable with Franco.

Like Basura, Mortimer’s sound is not what anyone would consider punk rock nowadays. It’s rock, not even really hard rock, with somewhat echoey vocals that strike me as influenced by rockabilly, a style that would become hugely popular in Spain. The tunes are less hooky than Basura’s, but comparing Mortimer to their flares-‘n’-slippers contemporaries makes it clear that simplicity and lack of pretense was the essence of punk music for them. And maybe there is something Dada-esque about the sleeve art after all. You tell me.

Kaka De Luxe

Glam’s influence was most overt with Madrid’s leading punk band, Kaka De Luxe. (Perhaps it’s no surprise that Cock Sparrer’s only 70s album, which was a 77 update of glam and the classic British R&B sound, was released in Spain, not England.) Kaka De Luxe took the London punk image seriously. They were all snot and bile, and their punkness, based as it was on image, was not built to last. At their punkest, Kaka De Luxe still sounded more like a traditional rock band playing vampy updates of Little Richard tunes (uh, is that the definition of glam?). Kaka De Luxe featured the 14-year-old Mexican sex symbol Alaska Vómito Popelín (née Olvido Gara Jova), who would go on to fame and (ill) repute as a new wave-cum-popstar-cum-sex activist. Alaska also acted in Pedro Almodóvar’s first film, which featured members of Kaka De Luxe portraying a band she joined. Other members later landed in Paralisis Permanente, Paraiso, and other bands; they became painters, television stars, and the like. Alaska’s father was a Mexican diplomat stationed in Madrid, and the other members came from similarly upper-crust backgrounds, with parents who were doctors or lawyers. It may not be possible to discern an upper-class sound in Kaka De Luxe’s songs, but I believe the differences between this band and La Banda Trapera Del Río ultimately boil down to class. However, I should not give short shrift the gender aspect (especially because LBTDR had its macho side): it was no small matter for an underage woman to be so sexually provocative, redolent with promiscuity, in those days when women’s liberation was emerging. Spain was playing catch-up in this department, and Kaka De Luxe, like Almodóvar, and then later the 80s punk bands Las Vulpess, Desechables, and Ultimo Resorte, seemed determined not only to charge forward, but to push norms to a point of liberation that no society has reached even in 2008. In Alaska’s case, within a few years, her provocations would become fodder for popular acclaim and she would become a mainstream sex symbol. Kaka De Luxe’s musicmay not possess the sonic urgency that, for example, Ultimo Resorte later would, but they, like the Sex Pistols, were a controversy set to music rather than the other way around. Still, Kaka wrote some great tunes, and, at this late date, it’s difficult not to see punk rock’s dialectic emerge from the two different approaches La Banda Trapera Del Río and Kaka De Luxe took—a path not chosen so much as dictated by circumstance, class and geography, mostly.

Although the members of La Banda Trapera Del Río were truly social outsiders, the environment in which Kaka De Luxe existed was particularly unfriendly, because Madrid had been the seat of Falangist power. Therefore, punks in Madrid faced a hostile reception. The punk scene in Madrid, it seems, reproduced this hostility internally. The punks fought each other as well as their antagonists in the city. Bands from Barcelona received a violent reception. Ultimo Resorte, in their amazing Maximum Rocknroll interview in 2007, recalled a trip to Madrid that landed them in jail after the audience attacked the band while they played. (I highly recommend reading this interview, as it is full of information about the early Spanish punk scene and the emergence of hardcore in Spain.) As I think about Kaka De Luxe, I can’t help but wonder what John Savage or Greil Marcus would have had to say about them as they wrote their versions of punk’s history. Would they have considered them mere imitators of London’s scene? In my opinion, they were not. Would these writers have hailed the punks’ subaltern status in the post-dictatorship society? Wasn’t Johnny Rotten’s imprecation about the Queen’s “fascist regime” mere bluster in comparison to Kaka De Luxe’s tenuously post-fascist world, which saw bombings and assassinations committed by both the right and the left that could have brought a return to authoritarianism?

Above: Alaska Y Dinarama

Mariscal Romero, a hard-rock radio DJ, founded Chapa Discos to promote the new hard rock and urban rock bands emerging in Madrid in the late 70s. He championed them through his radio show and released their records. Some of these bands (Baron Rojo, Leño, Obus) became quite famous. Although Chapa specialized in hard rock, the label tried punk too. Though Kaka De Luxe recorded an LP in 1978, only a four-song EP was released at the time, with two slightly different pressings. Kaka De Luxe’s 7" was released by Chapa because the label sponsored a contest for a record release at the first Villa De Madrid festival. Romero recorded the record for the band. There’s a well-known anecdote that circulates in the Spanish punk scene about Romero securing an audition for Kaka De Luxe in front of music-industry executives. At the audition, they played a song called something like “What A Bunch of Idiots I Have As My Public” while the singer pointed to the assembled industry bigwigs. Scandal!

Other than a track on v/a “Bloodstains Across Spain” taken from the 78 EP, none of Kaka De Luxe’s records has been reissued, but a few sites have downloads available. Their full LP was not released until 1983, at a time when the Spanish hardcore punk scene was flourishing. (It was also bootlegged not long after in Mexico; Alaska Y Dinarama sold millions of records and toured Latin America in the 1980s.) The audience for Kaka’s LP in 1983 probably was larger than it would have been in 1978, but, at the same time, its decidedly slow, non-hardcore sound probably would not have appealed to the faster-and-louder youth. In truth, it was most likely released to cash in on the popularity of the members’ other projects at the time, particularly Alaska’s new wave group and her television program.

Red Box El Rojo

Though a hard-rock band, Red Box El Rojo undoubtedly veer toward punk with the aggressiveness of their sound and, more so, their lyrics—though maybe ‘bangers would consider the band proto-metal too. Their two-song 45 was released on Chapa Discos and it was apparently some sort of advertisement for a blue-jeans company. Maybe a comparison is in order here: Red Box El Rojo, from Madrid, advertised jeans; La Banda Trapera Del Río’s name translates loosely to the River Rag Band. Anyway, members of Red Box El Rojo had played in a band called Madrid 20 earlier and then went on to Obus, one the biggest metal/hard-rock groups in Spain. It’s difficult not to assume that the “red” theme running through Red Box El Rojo (seriously, what’s that supposed to mean?), including the song called “Red Anger,” was meant to demarcate their politics. I do not know what reception this caused, but the inflammatory, left-wing tone is part of the reason I would consider this band proto-punk. This sort of language had some precedent in folk/protest music in Spain, but, as far as I can tell, Red Box El Rojo’s was the first rock/punk record to expressly invoke a “red” politics. Here’s a sample of their lyrics, from “Ira Rojo,” a song marked by its insistent, driving drumming: “I am fed up with this city / I am fed up with good and bad / I am fed up with being lazy / I am fed up with myself / I am fed up with you and me / I am so fed up.” Again, pretty punk if you ask me. It gets better. On the flipside, in “All of Us,” Red Box El Rojo sang, “They have the television / We have the streets / They have the money / We have the life / They have the bullets / We have the hearts.” This is grade A, timeless counterculture stuff. So was a jeans company capitalizing on this sentiment? Perhaps. But the obscurity of the record leads me to think they didn’t succeed. Besides, jeans were not yet fashionable in Spain in 1978. In comparison to the juvenile and potty-mouthed Ramoncín, one can say only that Red Box El Rojo managed to exceed whatever commercial ambition their backers may have had. Besides, Chapa Discos’ label logo is a spoof of Coca-Cola’s logo, long before such satire was as common and mainstream as the corporate culture it skewers. In fact, that culture was burgeoning in Spain in 1978, and one can read this spoof as a subtle protest against the eruption of the consumption-based mass society for which many Spaniards had been clamoring during the destitution of the dictatorship: Chapa’s logo predicts that the next epoch in Spanish history would be marked by Americanization, rather than a realization of ira roja. Even today, the band’s songs stand as strong statements of protest. At so many years’ distance, it is tough to see how this record was compromised by its association with an advertisement for jeans. Whereas Ramoncín was constitutively exploitive, clearly using the marginality of punk to further his own selfish sex-and-drugs lifestyle, Red Box El Rojo, if anything, used the commercial aspect as cover for a message that might have actually be much more difficult to digest on its own.

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Drogas, Sexo, Y Un Dictador Muerto: 1978 on Vinyl in Spain

La Banda Trapera Del Río

I fear this article has proceeded in reverse order. La Banda Trapera Del Río has been perched as the angel, fallen perhaps, watching over my accretion of Spanish punk and punky hard-rock records from 1978. Each band, fairly or not, explicitly or not, has been compared to them. Though they were important at the time, the centerpiece of the nascent punk scene in Barcelona, they fell into obscurity until around 1991 when La Perrera covered one of their songs. A reunion and a reissue of their 1978 LP sparked a resurgence of interest in the band, which has led to them today being—deservedly—the most well-documented early Spanish punk band, with their records lavishly reissued and a beautiful hard-cover history by Jaime Gonzalo published. They lived a punk lifestyle, on the margins of the outskirts of Catalan society (itself marginalized and suppressed by Franco), and their songs attempted to capture the tensions, the Apollonian and Dionysian forces, inherent to not only creating art (music) but to exclusion from bourgeois society’s normal structures of reward, where criminality and nihilism offer a respite from poverty, boredom, and wasted time. Morfi, the band’s leader, was doubly an outsider because he lived in the slums when the band formed and because his childhood had spent in Melilla, a colonial outpost of Spain in Morocco. Gonzalo described Cornellá de Llobregat as “the perfect setting to earn a following for La Banda Trapera Del Río.” He said that the band “articulated the feelings and thoughts of young people in Cornellá. It was like an Indian reservation, far away from Barcelona and the world.” To describe this “hermetic society,” he listed some adjectives: “underworld, tough, folkloric, ethnic, underground, isolated.”

In my opinion, La Banda Trapera Del Río deserve to be held in the same regard as Radio Birdman or the Saints, even though their proto-punk sound emerged simultaneously with the worldwide punk explosion, meaning that it was not temporally proto-punk nor sonically punk proper—rather the excitement and effervescence of the “new” music combined with the social and cultural ferment of the end of the dictatorship to inspire a new sound in Spanish music, and in music worldwide. La Banda Trapera Del Río’s original sound is not quite like that of any of its influences, from Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper to the Stooges and David Bowie. Gonzalo again, “As idiot savants, they managed to assimilate … all [these influences] and mix it with classic rocknroll and an urgency of their own.” Perhaps the band’s sound was less of a break from the present than that of early punk bands like the Ramones, Television, Suicide or Buzzcocks, Slits, Gang of Four, but what they managed to achieve was a amalgamation of the urgency of the post-dictatorship moment with the aggressiveness and antisocial vibe of punk rock while updating the sound of the proto-punks and hard rockers from the early part of the 70s. In comparison, as much as the Saints may have had a ear-catching, innovative sound (circa “Most Primitive Band in the World” era only, natch), La Banda Trapera Del Río created music that to me is more impressive and more fulfilling as a listening experience because it feels like it’s balanced on a knife edge, headed almost certainly for oblivion. (In truth, the band’s delinquency would soon win out; by the early 80s, heroin addiction would weaken their sound and tear the band apart.)

La Banda Trapera Del Río’s only specific domestic influence was Pau Riba, “a Catalan rock songwriter rooted in the local folk movement of the late 60s.” Morfi’s admiration for Riba caused him to sing in Catalan—but this choice was also meant to be provocative. To sing “Ciutat Podrida,” a real-life narration of the rot at the core life in Barcelona, in Catalan was, on one level, to reject four decades of Franco’s suppression of the Catalan nation within Spanish culture, but, on another level, it was also to reject Catalan national pride by saying that this identity had failed a group of young people who saw no prospects in it, who chose not to become a part of what would in a decade or two a fully integrated and acceptable cultural identity/commodity because that identity did not allow room for their subaltern experience. As a member of Ultimo Resorte remembered of the scene in those ghettos in the very early days, “Punk was a strange wave of violent people trying to justify their violence.” He continued, in the interview in Maximum Rocknroll, about La Banda Trapera Del Río, “We used to go to their shows to do what you did in those times—spit at the band and get into fights. Many of the people around us were pure delinquents, into robbery and shit. Then punk started mixing the people who came for the music, the aesthetics, the social movement, etc., with people who were just plain bad. Truly dangerous people and we all hung out together. We even robbed each other! We got our practice space broken into twice and it was people from our own gang.”

On the A side of their 1978 single, “La Regla” features Morfi’s strident vocal stylings, a harangue meant to catch the attention of any respectable citizens within earshot—and to repulse them. Whereas Johnny Rotten’s singing was all sarcasm and snot, Joe Strummer’s was all suss, and Joey Ramone’s was all arch mindlessness, Morfi’s is all desperation. The guitarists’ dexterous interplay on this song is far more intricate than what one typically associates with punk’s class of 78, but it never feels cultivated like 70s hard rock. Rather, it’s meant as agitation. The caustic guitar sound strikes me as at least five, maybe ten, years ahead of its time. “A Cloaca,” or “From the Sewer,” is the faster of the two, with El Maderas’ lead guitar wailing throughout. The tune is based on a typical rocknroll form, in line with glam’s influence, but it is much less fey than anything produced during the classic glam period of the early 70s. “Cyborgs Revisited,” the posthumous proto-punk classic by Canada’s Simply Saucer, may be the best comparison to La Banda Trapera Del Río. The sounds are not alike but they are similar, combining a rugged simplicity with technical dexterity. This combination was not a wholly unusual formula in the pre-hardcore (or pre-postpunk) days. Many guitarists in those days were trained and prepared to play a musical form that was maximalist, expressive, and indulgent. Yet the momentum of stripping ornament from rock music, which we can now view retrospectively as having begun with a variety of proto-punk bands in Detroit and elsewhere, led, I would argue, to both hardcore punk and UK DIY. Before we arrived at those extreme distillations, however, we encountered La Banda Trapera Del Río and Ramoncín y WC? in Spain; Pankrti in Yugoslavia; Benitokage and 3/3in Japan; industry-insider fake punks like Gyppo in England; and drug- and sex-addicted degenerates like the Dogs, the (other) Dogs, and the Shitdogs here in God’s Country; all these bands brought technical proficiency to bear on glam- and/or psych-influenced fast rocknroll.

On a single Munster released last year, “La Paja de Diego” is the earliest extant recording of La Banda Trapera Del Río. (The flipside is a live recording from 1980 of “Comics y Cigarillos”; thus, it technically falls outside the purview of this article.) “La Paja de Diego” is an early version of the tune “Meditación del Pelos en su Paja Matinera” (from “Diego’s Wank” to “Diego’s Morning Meditation on Wanking”), which appeared on their LP. The live recording emphasizes the rhythm guitar, which seem like a very accidental realization of the anti-rockstar attitude of punk. But it was certainly accidental: underneath the rather undistorted rhythm guitar, one can hear wild guitar leads that edge from psicodélica into psychotic. This, friends, is thug-punk of the highest order, not quite as blunt as some of the New York/Detroit classics of the subgenre, but with the menace and unpredictability—and general oddity—imbued by guys dressed in drag and wearing make-up, or else in the ripped and torn clothes of unemployed lumpen proles, furtively passing dimebags and flashing blades. It’s the camp the bubbles beneath the surface in A Clockwork Orange or The Warriors. Only here, at Barcelona’s second punk festival, in February 1978 when “La Paja de Diego” was recorded, it was the real thing.

Moving on to La Banda Trapera Del Río’s LP, what I notice foremost when listening to it is the dynamism of the recording, highlighting equally Morfi’s outrageous lyrics (and delivery), with the endless lead guitar attacks just behind. (Though I must say the guitars are more prominent than the vocals on the single, which makes me wish the LP had tipped the balance in this direction too.) The lyrics propel this band far to the punk side, particularly in comparison to the generic and ultimately forgettable lyrics of the Saints, for example. The Trapera musicianship exudes energy—another quality that makes the band so inherently punk—even as the tempos vary and the songwriting builds upon itself, so unlike the paragon of punk’s explosive energy, the Ramones’ first LP. Of course I can intellectually recognize that La Banda Trapera Del Río’s 1978 LP was not recorded straight through in a single take, but as I listen to it, I have noticed myself nonetheless wondering how the band sustained such energy for the entire length of the recording. In this way, the LP captivates me, brings me into its world, which is a unique one that is not accessed by any other record I’ve ever heard. How I wish I could have seen the band live—particularly at the October 1977 festival in Madrid sponsored by the Partido Comunista de España—to witness what must have been a formidable display of rocknroll energy tempered (or burnished?) only by the mayhem that certainly ensued among their fans.

I should mention that I’ve never heard, or even touched, an original copy of the LP, which currently sells for over $250 in mint shape (no easy find), but Munster’s reissue sounds excellent. The Munster 2xLP includes four live songs that were recorded not long before the LP. They offer a glimpse into the evolution of the band’s sound. The guitars are cleaner, perhaps more typically punk circa February 1978 than the sound captured in the studio. Again, the rhythm guitar is louder than the lead guitar, unfortunately. Morfi’s vocals remain prominent, demonstrating the centrality of his severe antisocial streak to the Trapera live experience. The live version of “Ciutat Podrida,” complete with a plastered gang chorus (probably comprising actual gang members) is particularly compelling. “Eunocos Mentales” features an extended solo/improv section, which shows that the band was not ready to leave behind the early 70s musically as much as their antics and lyrics would have been impossible under the dictatorship. The main drawback of the 2xLP and single is that the original records’ sleeve artwork is not reproduced. The original sleeve is far superior to the reissue’s.

As I close my discussion of La Banda Trapera Del Río, and of the vinyl produced in Spain in 1978, I feel I must focus on one song from the B side of the LP, “Padre Nuestro,” which may be the most hard rock tune on the album. It begins with a Detroit-esque intro that is a take on a Nuge classic and then becomes a vampy, accent-on-the-downbeat 70s rock tune. It’s a classic formula. “Padre Nuestro” is, to me, the sound of hopefulness that knows it is self-sustaining, and thus will soon be exhausted. Gonzalo wrote that if Belter Records had had any hope of cashing in on this LP, it was dashed by this song’s lyrics, which satire the “Our Father” prayer by saying essentially that democracy was becoming Spain’s new religion—and not in a good way. The song’s ambiance, more than the lyrics, suggests, if our father cannot save us, we will have to save ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay. But, most likely, it won’t. But at least we will be able to say, as the LP has been saying all along, that we had a blast in the meantime.

Coda

In conclusion, the punk explosion in Spain sounded nothing like that of other countries and may not have been as strict in its legibility qua “punk rock” as other explosions. Indeed, the classic “Bloodstains”/“Killed by Death” sound, which has in the last 15+ years retrospectively revised the dogma about what the underbelly of punk rock sounded like in the 70s, did not emerge in Spain until the early 80s, at which point it also overlapped with the hardcore punk explosion. The 1978 sound itself, which was diverse, cannot be attributed to the political situation per se, but the influence of 70s hard rock on the sound was certainly due to the proximity and overlap of punk rock with the withering of Spain’s hippie countercultural moment. In other countries, if I may briefly rehearse the traditional narrative of punk’s genesis, that withering occurred early in the 70s and ushered in the early years of heavy metal and the general darkness that characterized the post-hippie sound but it also ushered in prog, stadium rock, symphonic collaborations—self-important indulgence that obfuscated the rebelliousness that once characterized rocknroll. Bloated on its own onanism, the music grew so elaborate that it lost touch with rocknroll’s roots and, of course, the fans’ everyday realities. Punk rock reversed the trend by being radical—going to the root. (This historical sketch is not without faults and I and others have critiqued it.) In Spain, however, to be radical, because of the political circumstances, did not necessarily, or only, entail tossing aside the glitzy artifice of 70s progressive rock. That artifice did not exist in Spain to the degree it did in the profligate United States or Britain rock milieux, simply because the budgets afforded to Spanish bands were infinitesimal in comparison. But, in another way, Spain’s artifice ran deeper. It was in the entire society’s shameful acceptance of four decades of dictatorship. It was in the fiction that the democratically elected government that took power would be less corrupt, less venal, less dysfunctional than the fascist regime that preceded it. Yes, the punks wanted to get rid of obsolescent, obdurate musical habits, but they wanted to get rid of everything else too. I mean everything. And I see no contradiction between this nonspecific lashing-out and the effluent maximalism of, for example, the guitar work of La Banda Trapera Del Río. Minimalism would come later, after the possibility that I argue characterized Spain’s post-dictatorship punk explosion had been recognized as thwarted.